Skip to main content

Crestview projects take to the skies

Dillon Gagnon, Austin Gagnon and William Relue (from left) inflate a weather balloon Thursday, May 11, at Crestview Middle School as Crestview science teacher Cheryl Simms watches in the background. Austin Gagnon, a recent graduate of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, spearheaded a NASA-funded project at Crestview which culminated with the students launching rockets they had made as well as the weather balloon.
Dillon Gagnon, Austin Gagnon and William Relue (from left) inflate a weather balloon Thursday, May 11, at Crestview Middle School as Crestview science teacher Cheryl Simms watches in the background. Austin Gagnon, a recent graduate of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, spearheaded a NASA-funded project at Crestview which culminated with the students launching rockets they had made as well as the weather balloon. Photo by Cindy Klepper.

Crestview Middle School students gathered on the school’s soccer field Thursday, May 11, for a long-anticipated launch of rockets they had constructed.

They’d had to wait through two weeks of rain cancellations, but when the launch actually came to pass, the rockets soared into the sky.

The program that led up to the launch, though, had an even longer incubation period.

It started four years ago when Austin Gagnon, then an incoming freshman at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, won one of the four Chapman Scholarships the school awards each year. The scholarship paid for the Coldwater, MI, student’s tuition, fees, room and board and textbooks for four years, but there was a catch — he had to come up with a senior project that would benefit the community.

“I had to tie my major with community service,” Gagnon explains.

So Gagnon, an electrical engineering major, started working two years ago toward that project.

He rounded up five other IPFW students to help, and one happened to be Quentin Lintz, a former Crestview Middle School student. Lintz called Crestview to see if a teacher there would be interested in getting involved and science teacher Cheryl Simms jumped at the opportunity.

She sponsored a club of about 15 students, initially known as the Junior Space Agency and, after receiving a $30,000 grant from NASA, as the NASA Rocket Club. The club started meeting right after Christmas, and the crew from IPFW met with the club on a regular basis.

“We’re teaching kids about rockets,” explains IPFW student William Relue — how to build rockets, touching on physics, engineering and more and acquainting the students with careers in math, science and engineering.

Gagnon, who graduated from IPFW in December and now works as an electrical engineer at Undersea Sensor Systems in Columbia City, coordinated the May 11 launch, with the help of Relue and Dillon Gagnon.

Members of the Crestview club secured their rockets to a launch stand, counted down and watched as the rockets launched into the sky — then fluttered down with the help of parachutes.

The club also launched a weather balloon that recorded video of its flight while recording weather data.

The balloon was equipped with tracking devices, and Gagnon and his crew planned to retrieve the balloon — he estimated it would float two to three hours away from the launch site — when it came down, then pass the video and weather data on to the Crestview students.